Wednesday, September 14, 2011

I have a fiesty one too! It is my youngest, I have told people that it is a good thing he was not my first or I wouldn't have had anymore! One night I was putting him to bed and he was being a little sassy. I told him to get in bed and he says, "you aren't the boss!" I fired back "oh yes I am." His response "no you aren't, God is!" How can you argue with that?

I have a feisty and fierce one, too - youngest of 5 girls! She definitely makes us laugh and we tease her about the funny things she said when she was little. "I'm not used to this family yet!" is one she will never live down. She's now a senior in high school!

September 7, 2011 10:41 PM

Leona from Leona's Quilting Adventures (I love her name by the way...) has a great modern mini quilt to share. It's all solids, and in fact my next quilt in my sketch book is all solids! Anyway, check out her finished quilts (I loooove when ya'll have this tab!) I especially love this castle peeps mini, so cute!! Leona also has an Etsy fabric shop, small but I did see Heather Ross and Denyse Schmidt's that are hard to come by!

Lately I have lived in the world of perpetually behind with many of my blocks swaps and bee blocks. My goal is to get caught up over the next several weeks and start posting everything. I think the changes from moving and transitioning into a new environment caught up with me for a while. Change is good, but sometimes the brain just has to re adapt!!

Over the long weekend I worked on Pam's Quilt. The center of the quilt is finished and needs to have three borders added to it before it can be sent off to be quilted.The mini for the "For Love of Solids" swap on flickr is almost completed. My secret partner loves purples and her quiltie reflects her favorite color!! One of the things that makes swapping fun is that it makes me push the envelope a bit more with each new project. The Bee Blocks, Blocks Swaps and flickr swaps challenge me because most times I have not attempted the project or process before. For the Love of Solids swap is a perfect example of the road less travelled. This project is improvised from basic instructions that began with a block from the book "Thinking Outside the Block." This is the first block that was created for the mini quilt. A simple improv block for the beginning of a modern quilt.

Nine blocks were created following the same process and alternating the purple to plum color pallet. Several blocks that I made didn't turn out as nice as I would have liked, so they met the trash can!! This picture is of the first four that were acceptable.

This is an initial layout of the nine blocks that ended up in the quiltie. Each block varies in color and placement of the strips. Through the process, which was very fun I decided that somewhere down the road I would like to make a full size quilt with larger blocks...and perhaps the intermingling of Wonky stars!

The interesting thing about sewing the blocks together is that it felt like I was creating a whole piece of fabric. The blocks as they merged (and as you can see their orientation changed) really complimented each other. The straight line quilting started in the center with a triangle that I followed around and around, then ran off the edge of the fabric. Two secondary sections of quilting ran parallel and horizontal to the center triangle. It is pretty amazing in person and will be difficult to let go of once it has to be mailed.

The back of the quilt.

There are sometimes moments when I step back and look and think "did I do that?" A plum binding will be added and mailed with some purple goodies and a rainbow colored pincushion.

Work starts up again tomorrow. The laundry is done and even Chloe dog had a bath this weekend! She loves to smell everything and roll in the grass outside. The poor little dog had a bit of a green tinge to herself before her bath!!

My goal for the next several weeks is to get caught up with all of the overdue blocks that should have gone out in the mail many many weeks ago!!

I love Leona's quilt and her adventurous spirit to try new things. I have the same book, Thinking Outside the Block, but I've never thought of doing something like this great purple quilt. I receive Leona's feed through Google Reader, adn now I will do the same for your blog. THanks!